The house is dark, just the light over the cook top is on. I sit at the kitchen table and take another swig of bourbon.
The room is full of expensive pieces of furniture from a double oven to a restaurant-style refrigerator. The table I’m sitting at was handcrafted, as were the barstools lining the granite-topped bar. It’s a warm room, the one everyone calls the heart of the home. Most assuredly the most expensive room in this house. Yet, when I think about sitting here or sitting at the little beat-up table at Alison’s, there’s no question where I’d rather be.
And it isn’t fucking here.
My body aches. My shoulders are stiff, my head feels like I’ve gone a few rounds with my trainer. My throat is scratchy from yelling so much today, my knuckle a little ripped from hitting a punching bag at the gym with no gloves. The pain felt purifying, distracting from my true ailment—a blonde-haired, blue-eyed girl that I just might have ruined my chances with.
Not being able to smooth this over with her destroys me. Seeing the pain on her face, the little spec of insecurity in who I am and what I believe about her, hasn’t left me all day. In fact, it’s only pressurized, built, and now is bubbling over.
My phone buzzes and I only look at it in case it’s her. But it’s not. Of course it’s not. It’s Linc.
As much as I don’t want to hear his stupidity, I really don’t want to be alone. So I answer it.
“Hey,” I say, flinching as the bourbon festers in my stomach.
“What’s up?”
“Not much.” I sit the glass on the table. “What about you?”
“Not much. Just seeing what’s happening over there.”
I look around the room and consider just how much of nothing is happening. No conversations, no plans for tomorrow, no lunch dates on the schedule that I actually want to attend. Not one damn thing.
“Graham called earlier and filled me in on the debacle with the papers and all that,” he says, like he’s just tossing that out there as a conversation piece. It’s the reason he fucking called and as much as that annoys me, it’s also a relief.
“Yeah, it’s been a fucked up day.”
“How’d you handle it?”
“What do you mean, ‘How did I handle it?’” I snort. “I had a complete fucking come-apart in the middle of my office.” I cringe as the memory washes over me, the fury I felt the moment I saw those headlines driving a nail into my skull.
“I can imagine,” Lincoln says, no humor in his voice. “I have to say, I was a little disappointed no punches were thrown.”
I scoff at my little brother, the one that nearly charged the mound last year when a pitcher hit him three times in one game.
“I know you don’t like Nolan. Hell, I’m not sure how much I even like the son of a bitch right now. But I can’t throw punches. I have a real job.”
“Baseball is a real job, asshole. I make more than you do a year. Choke on that.”
I laugh, even though I don’t want to, because Lincoln is right. He makes more than I do doing a job that’s a hell of a lot more fun and less stressful.
“How’d Alison take it?” he asks.
“How do you think she took it?”
“That good, huh?”
Rubbing my temples, I consider refilling my glass with liquor. It would absolutely dull the pain, but it would also mute my ability to think, to process, to plan, and that’s nearly all I have on my side right now. I need to figure a way out of this.
“She’s effectively not talking to me right now,” I say, the words tasting as bitter as I expect them to. “A part of me feels like I need to act, to do something to make this better. It’s what I do. There’s a problem, I fix it. But you know, maybe this life I lead isn’t what’s best for her. I mean, fuck, Linc. My own people put out that article.”
He chuckles under his breath. “The life you lead isn’t the problem, brother. It’s your quote-unquote ‘own people’ that are the issue. I’m not even going to start into a big lecture here on how much I hate Nolan and all the reasons I think he’s poison to you.”
“You’re just mad he told dad you’re the one that wrecked my BMW back in the day,” I grin.
“Yeah because that shows his lack of loyalty! It was none of his fucking business. You and I had it worked out. It would’ve been fixed and that would’ve been the end of it. The cocksucker overhears us talking and snitches like the asshole he is.”
Sighing, I stand and walk over to the island where I left the bottle of bourbon. I pour a little into my glass and swirl it around while I consider Lincoln’s words.
“I’m days from this election. If I weren’t, I would’ve fired him today.”
“You should’ve fired him today.”